How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again Essay

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In the following essay, Park interprets the story's structure, imagery, motifs, and verbal echoes to show that the title reflects the protagonist's return to "a place that before had failed her miserably."

Joyce Carol Oates is a most prolific writer. Born in 1938, she has now published seven novels, five collections of short stories, two volumes of poetry, a collection of critical essays, and a number of uncollected stories, poems, and essays. Any reader who undertakes a critical study of Oates's production finds himself in very fertile but almost wholly uncultivated ground; the primary material is there, rich and teeming, but so far subjected to little serious analytical consideration. The short fiction particularly holds abundant possibilities for critical development: there are depths of mythic patterns, psychological probings, and structural complexities; however, only the shallowest spade work has been done. Indicative of the richness is the short piece of...